Hope

Tonight, I watched The Astronaut Farmer. On the surface, the movie is about a man building a rocket and going to space. But with any depth beyond that surface, the movie is about hope and not giving up on it.

I wrote a few days ago about thoughts prompted by Accepted. In its own way, that movie is also about hope. Many movies and stories can be found to be about hope and not giving up on dreams. Our history is filled with dreamers. Martin Luther King had a dream that most people have heard. In United States history, there is a strong culture of hope. The US was founded by individuals with a hope of greater religious freedoms. There is a strong notion of the foreign individual coming to the US to pursue a dream of a better life.

Hope is powerful. Hope can stimulate a person to start a business through entrepeneurship. Hope can keep an inventor from giving up after failed attempts to make a lightbulb. Hope has its risks as well though. Hope can also make a person gamble away what money he or she has. Hope can also make a person’s mind closed to unsupportive ideas.

I have my hopes and dreams. I work toward them. I believe all people should have their dreams and work towards them. A dream without progress toward that dream doesn’t really do much good. However, I believe that progress should be balanced. A dream should not be approached blindly. In the movie, Charles Farmer is not blindly trying to build a rocket. He had in fact been in the space program. He had an education in aerospace engineering. That background gave credence to his hope. His hope was not blind. He knew what he was doing. That’s why hope doesn’t do so well with gambling. No amount of background lets you beat the probabilities. There is no credence.